THE NIGHT SOMEONE SLIPPED THE
TRUTH SERUM IN THE PUNCH BOWL AT THE DEPARTMENT HEAD'S CHRISTMAS
PARTY

Richard M. Felder

Scene. Saturday, December 20, 8:45 p.m. The annual Bilgewater
University Materials Engineering Department Christmas party is in full swing at
the home of Ray, the department head. This year is unusual because Don (the
Provost) and Harry (the Dean of Engineering) have shown up. Also attending are
Eddie (the Assistant Dean for Academics) and most of the department faculty.
Several people have commented that the punch tastes a bit strange.

Don: "Hello there, young man--I don't believe we've met."

George: "I'm George Murchison, joint in biomedical and materials--just
finished my dissertation at Berkeley and started here this fall.

D: "Ah yes--aren't you the one who's been working on truth serum?
Fascinating stuff--doubt that it works, of course."

G: "Oh, it works--I've got some graduate students testing sodium
pentathol and I could tell you some stories that would..."

G: "Well, it wasn't exactly a choice--I sent out resumes to 65 schools
and only got interviews at two and this is the only one that offered me a
job."

D: "I know what you mean--I send my resume out whenever a chancellorship
comes up anywhere but I never make it past the first interview."

* * *

Eddie: "Hey, Joe. There's something I just learned about E.C. 2000
that I'd like to run by you."

Joe: "E.C. 2000. That's when all the computers crash, right?

E: "No, that's Y2K--E.C. 2000 is the new system they're going to use
for..."

J: "I'm spellbound, Eddie, I truly am, but I need to grab Harry while
he's here so I can tap some of his discretionary money for a lab renovation
I've been needing for three years--catch me up on it later."

* * *

Harry: "So, Al, how's life going for the assistant professors these
days?"

Al: "What life--this semester I taught two new courses and turned out
three proposals and Ray and a couple of the other full professors told me that
I've got to get more focused if I want to make tenure. Last week my wife mailed
me a postcard at work to ask me how I've been and whether I have any spots on
my calendar for her next year."

A: "He has no clue about what I'm doing--I said something about it the
other day and he told me to stop whining."

H: "Yeah, that's Ray for you...anyway, I heard you got great teaching
evaluations last semester and--oh, hello, Bill. I was just commenting on Al's
teaching evaluations. Right up there, they tell me."

B: "Yeah, they're almost obscene. If he keeps doing that, he'll end up
with a University Outstanding Teacher Award."

H: "Whoa, don't want that! I'd hate to see you wind up like most of
the other untenured professors who won one of those things."

B: "No joke. Take it from me, kid--if you're spending that much time on
your teaching, you're not paying enough attention to the things that will get
you where you want to go."

A: "But...."

* * *

Irv: "Nice party, Ray--better than your usual snoozers. What made
Harry and Don decide to show up?"

Ray: "They know I'm looking to get out of this dump, and if I go my $12
million scanning electron microscope project goes with me and the overhead from
that grant is keeping them alive."

I: "I thought all the grumbling about you at the last department head
review might have had something to do with it--aren't the assistant professors
on your case about dumping all those new course preparations on them while
you're pushing them to crank out ten proposals a year."

R: "Ah, they're just a bunch of whiners. Besides, who would Harry get
to replace me? Jones? Frobish? Daffy Duck? Bring Eddie back from the Dean's
office?"

I: "How about me. I could get drunk every day before breakfast and do
a better job than you."

R: "Well, you've been practicing the first part for 15 years--the only
question in my mind is whether they'd catch you first for mismanaging funds or
working your way through the secretary pool."

* * *

Eddie: "Hey, Gene--I was just looking at the E.C. 2000 Web site the
other day, and I noticed that it..."

Gene: "Oh yeah--that's where they have those porno pictures of movie
stars, isn't it?"

E: "No, it's where they define the criteria for..."

G: "Right, right...good talking to you, Eddie, but I need to talk to
Don about something--see you later."

* * *

Don: "Larry, my boy. How are things in the polymer business these
days?"

Larry: "Couldn't be better--I brought in another $2 million in
industrial support last month with a few well-placed phone calls."

D: "Splendid, splendid--I don't know how you keep doing it with the same
old results year after year.

L: "Nothing to it. The companies don't do research any more and I just
have to mention `polymers'’ and `profits' in the same paragraph and they throw
the keys to the safe at me. It's just a crying shame that almost half of it
gets skimmed off by that army of bean counters you keep employed."

D (chuckling): "Now now, you know how hard it would be to get anything
done on this campus without my hard-working staff--besides, at the Council of
Provosts in Maui last month I was the envy of all of those bozos when I told
them Bilgewater has a bigger Provost's staff than Harvard.

* * *

Charlie: "So the blond says, `I don't know--which one was the
horse?"

Joe: "Ha ha ha--that's a good one. You guys hear the one about the
blond who went to a hockey game and asked the usher..."

Eddie: "Hi, guys. Did any of you know that E.C. 2000 says..."

J: "E.C. 2000--that's the real estate company I listed our house with
three years ago...let me tell you, that agent I had couldn't sell flies to a
frog—--he was so..."

C: "No, you dummy--E.C. is that hospital program...like the other day
this woman was rushed in with a liver infection caused by contaminated tofu
that some beef producers were slipping into health food stores, and then the
doctor got into an argument with this priest who said..."

E: "No, no--E.C. 2000 is this outcome-based assessment system where
you have to..."

Ray: "Just peachy. I’ve got maybe three faculty members pulling their
weight and the others are total losers--tiny grants, no release time...I've got
endless dumb committee meetings to go to where nothing ever gets done or
decided--you run most of those, now that I think of it...I've got undergraduates
griping about huge lecture sections and professors who keep canceling classes
and advisors they can never find and TA's who can't speak English, and I tell
them to grow up and quit whining but they keep coming...and I have to deal with
Don siphoning my overhead money to those crybabies in liberal arts...plus, my
wife is giving me a hard time about my working nights and weekends, my kid just
got her nose and God knows what else pierced, and I've got killer hemorrhoids.
Thanks for asking."

H: "Boy, I'd really find all that distressing if it weren't for the
fact that I couldn't possibly care less. I've got much more heavy stuff on my
plate than you could dream of."

R: "Oh yeah--like what. They won't let you add three new associate
deans to the five you already have?"

H: "Well, for starters the trustees are talking about instituting
post-tenure review, including for administrators."

A sudden silence envelops the room, and no tenured faculty member says
another word for the rest of the evening.